A special Senate race to fill John Kerry's seat has the Tea Party struggling to find a candidate

All Share Services

It’s probably never been very easy to be a conservative or Republican in Massachusetts, but as things look like they’re slipping away just two days before a key deadline in a once winnable special Senate election, it has to be extra frustrating.

Potential candidates have until Wednesday to collect 10,000 signatures, leaving little hope of expanding the narrow Republican field after a slew of potential candidates have withdrawn or declined to run for the seat vacated by new Secretary of State John Kerry.

“It’s hard to find anyone that we can support,” lamented Carlos Hernandez, the state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots.

The biggest setback for Republicans came at the beginning of the month when former Sen. Scott Brown declined to run, dashing the GOP’s best hopes for taking the seat. It wasn’t as bad for Tea Party activists. Even though the conservative movement helped get Brown’s campaign off the ground in 2010, with Tea Party Express alone spending almost $350,000 on his behalf, he’s fallen out of favor for his moderate votes in the Senate.

But on top of Brown came more abstentions: From former Gov. Bill Weld and former state Sen. Richard Tisei, to ex-Lt. Govs. Kerry Healey and Jane Swift, former state Treasurer Joe Malone, and Mitt Romney’s son Tagg, people were beginning to wonder if Republicans could find a candidate at all.

Tea Party groups had their eye on Sean Bielat, a former Marine who gave Democratic Rep. Barney Frank a run for his money in 2010 and ran again in 2012, but their hopes were soon dashed when Bielat appeared to enter and then withdraw from the race, all in the same day.

Former Tea Party Express coordinator Joe Wierzbicki, who is now the executive director of the Conservative Campaign Committee PAC, said his team “scrambled” into action on Valentine’s Day when Bielat made the move, setting up the legal framework to spend on the candidate’s behalf, emailing their members, and preparing to cut a check.

”AND … Literally 4 minutes later as I was distributing our press release announcing our endorsement of him, we saw the story in the Boston Globe that he has just announced he is NOT running after all,” Wierzbicki said in an email to Salon. Bielat later apologized for the confusion.

Wierzbicki’s next choice is former U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, who has said he’s interested in a run, but can’t pay people to gather the necessary 10,000 signatures, raising doubts about his viability.

“You can understand that we want to make sure we don’t go through a drill like THAT again, so we’ll want to see some commitment by Sullivan and evidence he will be able to collect the requisite number of signatures by February 27th to qualify for the ballot,” Wierzbicki explained.

Other Tea Party leaders wanted Fox News psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow, who said he would run if there were no primary challenge. “He said that he’d get in if Scott Brown wasn’t in, and Scott Brown’s not in, and I’m shocked that he’s not in,” Hernandez said.

That leaves the two candidates who are expected to get the 10,000 signatures to make the ballot. There’s Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy SEAL and private equity investor in Boston who has been hiding from the press since announcing his intentions to run in a YouTube video.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Dan Winslow is also running and said yesterday that he had collected “nearly 25,000” signatures, more than double the amount needed to secure a spot in the April 30 primary.

But Tea Party groups haven’t been fired up about either candidate. “I mean, I’m assuming right now that this is all we’re going to get and I don’t even know what these candidates stand for,” Hernandez told Salon.

He said Tea Party activists will grudgingly support whoever emerges as the Republican nominee if it will help flip control of the Senate away from Harry Reid, but that he and fellow activists feel a bit used by the GOP.

No matter who wins the GOP primary, it will probably be an uphill climb against presumed Democratic nominee Rep. Ed Markey in the June 25 general election.

“I think it’s close to a lost cause,” Massachusetts Republican strategist Rob Gray told the Washington Post a few weeks ago. “Most people, including the ‘B’ tier of candidates, felt that [former Sen. Scott] Brown had a chance to win the special, but no other Republican probably did.”

And Democrats insist they are ready, saying they won’t make the same mistakes they did in 2010.

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald.

Featured Slide Shows

Share on Twitter

Share on Facebook

1
of
14

Close

Fullscreen

Thumbnails

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Pilot"

One of our first exposures to uncomfortable “Girls” sex comes early, in the pilot episode, when Hannah and Adam “get feisty” (a phrase Hannah hates) on the couch. The pair is about to go at it doggy-style when Adam nearly inserts his penis in “the wrong hole,” and after Hannah corrects him, she awkwardly explains her lack of desire to have anal sex in too many words. “Hey, let’s play the quiet game,” Adam says, thrusting. And so the romance begins.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Elijah, "It's About Time"

In an act of “betrayal” that messes up each of their relationships with Hannah, Marnie and Elijah open Season 2 with some more couch sex, which is almost unbearable to watch. Elijah, who is trying to explore the “hetero side” of his bisexuality, can’t maintain his erection, and the entire affair ends in very uncomfortable silence.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Charlie, "Vagina Panic"

Poor Charlie. While he and Marnie have their fair share of uncomfortable sex over the course of their relationship, one of the saddest moments (aside from Marnie breaking up with him during intercourse) is when Marnie encourages him to penetrate her from behind so she doesn’t have to look at him. “This feels so good,” Charlie says. “We have to go slow.” Poor sucker.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Shoshanna and camp friend Matt, "Hannah's Diary"

We’d be remiss not to mention Shoshanna’s effort to lose her virginity to an old camp friend, who tells her how “weird” it is that he “loves to eat pussy” moments before she admits she’s never “done it” before. At least it paves the way for the uncomfortable sex we later get to watch her have with Ray?

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Hard Being Easy"

On the heels of trying (unsuccessfully) to determine the status of her early relationship with Adam, Hannah walks by her future boyfriend’s bedroom to find him masturbating alone, in one of the strangest scenes of the first season. As Adam jerks off and refuses to let Hannah participate beyond telling him how much she likes watching, we see some serious (and odd) character development ... which ends with Hannah taking a hundred-dollar bill from Adam’s wallet, for cab fare and pizza (as well as her services).

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Booth Jonathan, "Bad Friend"

Oh, Booth Jonathan -- the little man who “knows how to do things.” After he turns Marnie on enough to make her masturbate in the bathroom at the gallery where she works, Booth finally seals the deal in a mortifying and nearly painful to watch sex scene that tells us pretty much everything we need to know about how much Marnie is willing to fake it.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Tad and Loreen, "The Return"

The only sex scene in the series not to feature one of the main characters, Hannah’s parents’ showertime anniversary celebration is easily one of the most cringe-worthy moments of the show’s first season. Even Hannah’s mother, Loreen, observes how embarrassing the situation is, which ends with her husband, Tad, slipping out of the shower and falling naked and unconscious on the bathroom floor.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and the pharmacist, "The Return"

Tad and Loreen aren’t the only ones to get some during Hannah’s first season trip home to Michigan. The show’s protagonist finds herself in bed with a former high school classmate, who doesn’t exactly enjoy it when Hannah puts one of her fingers near his anus. “I’m tight like a baby, right?” Hannah asks at one point. Time to press pause.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Role-Play"

While it’s not quite a full-on, all-out sex scene, Hannah and Adam’s attempt at role play in Season 3 is certainly an intimate encounter to behold (or not). Hannah dons a blond wig and gets a little too into her role, giving a melodramatic performance that ends with a passerby punching Adam in the face. So there’s that.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Shoshanna and Ray, "Together"

As Shoshanna and Ray near the end of their relationship, we can see their sexual chemistry getting worse and worse. It’s no more evident than when Ray is penetrating a clothed and visibly horrified Shoshanna from behind, who ends the encounter by asking if her partner will just “get out of me.”

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Frank, "Video Games"

Hannah, Jessa’s 19-year-old stepbrother, a graveyard and too much chatting. Need we say more about how uncomfortable this sex is to watch?

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Desi, "Iowa"

Who gets her butt motorboated? Is this a real thing? Aside from the questionable logistics and reality of Marnie and Desi’s analingus scene, there’s also the awkward moment when Marnie confuses her partner’s declaration of love for licking her butthole with love for her. Oh, Marnie.

Previous

Next

13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Vagina Panic"

There is too much in this scene to dissect: fantasies of an 11-year-old girl with a Cabbage Patch lunchbox, excessive references to that little girl as a “slut” and Adam ripping off a condom to ejaculate on Hannah’s chest. No wonder it ends with Hannah saying she almost came.